BAGHDAD — A Kia truck with explosives hidden in its cargo of watermelons exploded Tuesday, July 3, in Diwaniyah, a largely Shiite city in southern Iraq, leaving at least 40 people dead, including a 6-year-old boy, local officials said. It was the deadliest in a string of attacks Tuesday in central and southern Iraq.

The truck bomb in Diwaniyah was detonated near the city’s main fish and vegetable market, where local officials had reopened the streets to vehicles less than five months ago after keeping them closed for years over security concerns. The area was crowded with morning shoppers at the time of the explosion.

“What did we do wrong?” said Saad Abbas, a teacher who awoke later in a local hospital, where he was being treated for wounds to the head and chest. “I was shopping for my family, and I felt a huge explosion. I fell to the ground, and the next thing I know I am in the hospital.”

Overall, the attacks Tuesday left nearly 50 people dead and more than 100 wounded. The variety of methods used is indicative of what Iraq still faces on a daily basis, more than six months after the U.S. military departed and more than nine years after it invaded: a huge truck bomb, improvised explosives and assassinations by gunfire.

In Karbala, a holy Shiite city in the south, two homemade bombs that were attached to vehicles detonated in a vegetable market, killing six people and wounding more than 25, according to a local police official. The explosions came three days before an important Shiite religious ceremony is scheduled to be held in the city, raising the specter of further violence against Shiite pilgrims, who are frequently targeted by insurgents.

These attacks continued an upsurge of violence in Iraq that began last month, exacerbating a sense of fatalism in the country. Ordinary Iraqis have seen little noticeable improvement in security for nearly three years, a stark fact that conflicts with the narrative offered by U.S. and some Iraqi officials that the situation in the country is steadily improving.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in News

In Mears Park, the holiday luminescence has lost some luster. The twinkle has tapered. The shine has dimmed. On a chilly Monday evening, Jacob Moore and his rat terrier, Tucker, wandered through downtown St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood, where they were underwhelmed by the holiday light display. The bars were busy, but the trees inside Mears Park were bare, though lights...

The River City Sculpture Tour, which this year brought a moose, giant dragonfly and chokecherry tree to downtown Stillwater, has been such a success that the organizer is planning to make it bigger and better in 2017. Artist and tour founder Julie Pangallo said Tuesday that she plans to expand the to downtown Bayport. “The tour has been phenomenally well-received,” Pangallo...

A 60-year-old Faribault man was killed Thursday evening when his car collided with a semitrailer in Rice County. The Minnesota State Patrol reported that Randy J. Hansen was driving a 1995 Pontiac Grand Am southbound on Highway 21 and making a left turn to continue eastbound on 21 shortly after 5:30 p.m. when his car collided with a semi going...

Transit for Liveable Communities and St. Paul Smart Trips are merging Jan. 1 to create a new nonprofit organization to promote buses, trains, bikes, car sharing, walking and other alternatives to putting more cars on the road.

DULUTH, Minn. — A Roanoke, Va., multimillionaire who made his fortune in health care and has recently purchased coal mines wants to buy the bankrupt Magnetation LLC operations on Minnesota’s Iron Range and put laid-off employees back to work. That’s the plan of Tom Clarke, owner of ERP Compliant Fuels and now ERP Iron Ore, who has brokered a deal...

Renaldo Terez McDaniel was looking under the hood of his car outside a St. Paul auto-parts store on a summer evening last June when three shots were fired. One hit the 31-year-old McDaniel in the shoulder, another pierced his stomach. The third struck his head.